I’m excited to announce that was recently awarded a grant from Hungry’s Gallery. Here is an excerpt from the email I received:

“Congratulations, you have been selected as the 2008 Hungry’s Gallery Photography Grant Recipient!  As the grant recipient, you will be awarded $1000.00 to further your work on your photographic series, “Living In Between,” as well as a solo exhibition at Hungry’s Gallery in April 2009.
This year’s grant competition was juried by Madeline Yale, Executive Director of the Houston Center for Photography.  With over thirty applicants, Ms. Yale had a very challenging job choosing just one artist to be the grant recipient, but as we viewed all of the submissions together, we were blown away by the beautiful images in your “Living In Between” series.  The juror also awarded honorable mentions to three artists: Carey Russell, Teresa Munisteri, and Kristy Peet.”

See links to look at their website.

I recently visited New York City and happily overloaded on art. Chelsea was full of interesting and thoughtful work.  I was on a mission to find the right place for my work. It takes courage, but my hope is to spend some time putting my work out there and eventually get an exhibition in the Big Apple.

My photography: 30 Dresses Black: White Sands, NM #1 is currently featured in an exhibition called, After Life, at the Watson Studio Gallery in Johnson City, TX. The link is below. My photograph is number 20.

http://www.lostcanuck.com/studio/exhibitions/afterlife/index_2.html

I have an exhibition opening Friday, October 3 here in Lubbock, TX. Here is part of the press release I sent out.

“Over the past several years, JoAnna Johnson has been photographing empty dresses in natural settings. She has made nearly 100 dresses all in the same style. In this body of work, dragged and dropped, JoAnna uses a single dress she made from a bold graphic black and white print. Within this pattern there is both chaos and order, which mirrored her feelings while JoAnna and her husband settled into their new home in Lubbock.  They moved to Lubbock two years ago and she has been using the process of photographing her dresses to explore her feelings about the move and help her to grieve for the loss of her home and friends in southern Illinois. This dress has traveled with her and been photographed from New York City (her favorite city) to Lubbock, TX (her new home).”

This is the first in a series of exhibitions of the dresses. The second will be at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (LHUCA) in December and January and will feature the thirty black dresses and the thirty white dresses and it’s called, Living In Between. The third in the series is still in process. I’ve made 17 dresses in the same style out of old tablecloths only these dresses have full circle skirts. I have actually worked with models this time…little girls 6-12 years old. It’s been interesting to work with inhabited dresses instead of empty ones. More on this later.

Welcome to my website. The purpose of this site is to share some of my photography with the public. This work focuses on three dress projects which have resulted in two bodies of work: Living In Between and dragged & dropped. Living In Between focuses on the 30 white and the 30 black dresses. dragged and dropped focuses on the single black and white dress. See the artist statements to learn more about the exhibitions. I hope you will take time to watch my video (see links). I also want to use this blog to write about my process in the past and in the present.